for me and for all of
us. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men in
this world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across
the little park paths when they like?"

And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration),
the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the
newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of
England and the President of the United States.

Just how much governing can a President do?

How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every
morning in the papers of the country--all these white fields of
attention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover?

How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?

How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at
breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their
faces?

I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of
his thoughts, of his will, of his desires!

I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous,
silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly
published across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts.

I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into
headlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare
to say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white
reels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with
the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night.

The President is saying Look! in the night!

The newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets!

CHAPTER VI

THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"

If news is governing, how does the President do his governing?

By being News, himself.

By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News
Themselves, news about American human nature--where all the people will
see it.

By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news
about what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes.

By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving
the people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next,
sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program
of issues.

By telling the people news about their best business men, the business
men and invento